


ours is not a caravan of despair

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: OT3 AU verse fics [6]
Category: 16th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, The Tudors (TV)
Genre: A Parody of Tumblr Discourse or Tumblr Wank, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biphobia, Bisexuality, Fix-It, Homophobia, Multi, Multimedia, OT3, Oneshot, Period Typical Attitudes, Polyamory, Stepmother-Stepdaughter Relationship, Unconventional Families, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21932791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: In another world, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Thomas Cromwell were in a loving polyamorous relationship from 1536 onwards. As incredible as it may be, several of Anne Boleyn's children were secretly fathered by Thomas Cromwell, and there is evidence that Mary Tudor knew about the paternity of some of her supposed half-siblings. Even more incredibly, Mary Tudor was likely wholeheartedly supportive of her parents' relationship, and most incredibly of all, Tumblr is still Tumblr in any universe.AU, multimedia. Inspired by mihrsuri'sRewrite the Stars for You.
Relationships: Anne Boleyn/Thomas Cromwell/Henry VIII of England
Series: OT3 AU verse fics [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874566
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	ours is not a caravan of despair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mihrsuri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihrsuri/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, mihrsuri! 
> 
> Background: this is a fic set in mihrsuri's fic [Rewrite the Stars for You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13066005/chapters/29887581). It comprises a series of Tumblr reblogs, set in your OT3 verse, where people get into a _very healthy_ debate about the relationship between Anne Boleyn and Mary Tudor. 
> 
> Title from a poem by Rumi (very appropriate, given Queen Mihrimah in your verse!).
> 
> Warnings for biphobia, homophobia, and all the general trappings of Tumblr discourse.

> > > > > **controversial-historian:  
>    
>  **People need to stop holding up Mary Tudor as some beacon of early acceptance of bisexuality and polyamory. She probably didn’t know, she kept a healthy distance from her stepmother and “half-siblings”, and such a thing was completely outside her worldview. And if she did know, her life must have been truly miserable as Henry, Anne, and Thomas Cromwell would have had her on a leash and watched all of her movements very closely, to ensure she didn’t do anything to act against them. She never would have been trusted by them, and it’s truly fucking sad when you think about it. She loses her faith in the Church and the comfort of her mother, and just when she thinks she’ll be welcomed back to court, she discovers she’ll have to put up with what she viewed as an abomination and betrayal for the rest of her life. And five hundred years later, people are making posts about “my trash poly bisexual blended family uwu”.  
>    
>  The message of Mary Tudor’s lifetime is not one of progressive triumph, but of tragedy.

> > > > **reinacatalina:  
>    
>  **Agreed. IDK how people can spin her story as “eVeN iN tHe 1500s dIvOrCe CoUlD bE a GoOd tHiNg”.  
>    
>  Take off your modern day blinders, people, and realize the fucking magnitude of what Anne Boleyn’s actions meant for Mary Tudor.

> > > **butthecoinmayflip:  
>    
>  **Okay. You want to know the magnitude of what Anne Boleyn’s actions meant for Mary Tudor? With historical context and norms provided?  
>    
>  **1\. Anne Boleyn had no obligation to Mary Tudor.  
>    
>  **When Anne Boleyn came into the royal family’s life, from the outside looking in, Mary Tudor was in a great position. She had been allowed to retain her title of princess despite her parents’ annulment, and she was kept in an honorable establishment at her manor. If you’re going to insist on judging Anne & Henry by “contemporary standards”, you also have to apply them to Mary. That she was separated from her mother was _not_ viewed as cruelty by most people in the Tudor era, because it was common for royal children to be brought up in the countryside away from court, and having your own royal household was actually a sign of favor. Add to the fact that Mary had publicly defied her father in favor of her mother, and in the context of the Tudor era, that was a huge deal no matter how understandable it is to modern eyes.  
>    
>  Henry may have been angry at Katherine of Aragon for defying him and taken it out on Mary, but he was also clever -- a lot more subtle than people like to give him credit for. He ensured he could punish Mary while also appearing to be incredibly merciful. He was so good at PR, even the Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador thought Mary was being overdramatic when she complained of her happiness [citation of excerpt Chapuys’ correspondence, 1535] So. When Anne came into the picture, she really had no reason to interact with Mary at all.  
>    
>  The 1500s era did not have a concept of “blended families” -- usually, if a child had a stepmother, it was usually because the mother was dead. Henry’s situation was a huge anomaly. Stepmothers really had no obligation to their husbands’ previous children beyond basic politeness, and considering both of Mary’s parents were alive and well, in theory the onus for Mary’s welfare fell upon both of them. Anne had no obligation to go out of her way to make friends with Mary. Mary was also in her teens and almost “a woman grown, nearing marriageable age”, by the lights of their society. No one expected it of her, and people were surprised when she did.  
>    
>  In addition, Anne really didn’t need to interact with Mary at all in order to “make herself look good to Henry”, as I’ve seen some people claim. Contrary to people’s opinions, Anne Boleyn was relatively well-liked when she came into Henry’s favor, and seen as a breath of fresh air after Bessie Blount. As one of Anne’s detractors said, “She enjoyed all the advantages of the King’s Great Matter, without actually being the woman for whom the Great Matter was fought.” She didn’t need to cozy up to Mary to shore up her own image.  
>    
>  **2\. Mary Tudor was a threat to Anne Boleyn.  
>    
>  **Yes, you read that right. Mary Tudor was a threat to Anne Boleyn and her position, not because of any malice on either of the two women’s parts, but simply because of patriarchy and historical royal disputes and the general fucked-up ness of 1500s society. She was the daughter of the previous queen who had numerous royal connections and was beloved by the English people. Mary practiced a different faith and was nearly of childbearing age, an attractive candidate for marriage. All of these factors made her a threat to any heirs Anne would bear, since Anne’s children would be infants for many years to come.  
>    
>  Anne would not have been selfish or evil for viewing Mary this way. She would have been human, and putting her own interests and those of her family and children before someone she had all rights to consider a stranger. A bitter cup for Mary to drink from, but Anne did not pour it out for her.  
>    
>  **3\. Despite all of these, Anne went above and beyond to make Mary a part of the family.  
>    
>  **She wasn’t just cordial to Mary. She spoke to Henry to bring her back into contact with her mother -- _which was a very risky move for multiple reasons, both because it might have pissed Henry off, and also because keeping the two separated was not just a dick move but also a strategic move to prevent Mary and KoA from plotting together._ She had fresh gowns made for her and made her the third lady of the court, putting Mary in a position where she could build a power base of her own and make friends. _She herself advocated for Mary to be given a line in succession before any daughters Anne bore.  
>    
>  __Think_ about what that means. Anne struggled for four years to give Henry a male heir. She could have decided she wanted to see her blood rule England, even if it was through a daughter, and put Elizabeth before Mary while also keeping Mary a princess, and few would have faulted her for it. Yet she never so much as once hinted at the idea, and even reached out to Mary when there was a distance between her and her husband.  
>    
>  You want to insist that Mary accepting her father’s polyamory would have demanded a huge reconsidering of her principles? Then the many ways in which Anne Boleyn extended a hand of friendship would have also demanded an unprecedented reconsidering of her own principles.  
>    
>  Funny how you can claim OPPRESSION when Catholics in the 1500s set aside their (very natural!) prejudices, but when Protestants do it, it’s just “basic human decency and not worthy of any attention at all.”

> > **noteachotherscompetition:  
>    
>  **Not to hijack @ **butthecoinmayflip’s** post but forever LOLing at the idea that Mary was in any way “kept on a leash” by the King and Queen. I mean, she visited her mother whenever she wanted, sometimes even without letting Henry know and yet they never tried to punish her for it. She argued with Henry, Anne Boleyn, and Thomas Cromwell all on numerous occasions, and yet their relationships were strong enough that they could disagree and still get along -- and in the 1500s, that kind of multifaith coexistence was rare. Henry named her Regent of the kingdom in case he and Anne both died before Prince Tommy came of age -- that’s right, gave her _complete and utter free rein of the kingdom without him and Anne present_ , put the lives of his “bastard” children and his husband in her hands. If that isn’t an act of absolute trust, I don’t know what is. They believed her from the start when the Thomas Seymour debacle happened, and they gave her a huge degree of choice when it came to choosing her husband. When Henry (and Cromwell) were in danger, she raised an army and encouraged her mother to do so in order to save them.  
>    
>  I just… people want to keep banging the “Mary Tudor had a terrible life” drum when it’s so, so obvious that she didn’t. It speaks quite loudly that they can’t fathom women (and people in general) setting aside their differences and loving each other anyway. Not only is it incredibly reductive, it also ignores one of my favorite aspects about Anne: not her bisexuality or her polyamory or her “sluttiness” or her scandalousness or even her religious convictions, but her genuine kindness. The “nature vs. nurture” debate was still in its infancy during the 1500s, and it was still a widely held belief that your family and your birth determined you and nothing else. By all rights, Anne Boleyn and Mary Tudor should have been enemies or fellow courtiers on coolly polite terms at best. (Even Anne’s own _father_ , an experienced ambassador and diplomat, admonished her for being too kind to the Princess Mary. [source]) But Anne was able to look past all of those factors, to see the real injustice in Mary’s situation and use her power to make things right for her, and in doing so, she made Mary one of her most stalwart allies.  
>    
>  And that means so _much_ to me. As someone who grew up with parental figures who… definitely did _not_ view kindness as necessary to raising children, who still struggles with my queerness today, it means so _much_ to me to know that even in a time as deeply homophobic and as deeply patriarchal as the 1500s, people were capable of great kindness.  
>    
>  I guarantee you that I would have done anything to have someone like Anne Boleyn in my life.  
>    
>  I guarantee you I would have been as devoted a stepdaughter as Mary was to Anne to someone who was in my corner.  
>    
>  Instead of saying that Mary could never have genuinely come to accept her second family, that she either didn’t know or was browbeaten into submission… how about we just accept that not everyone in the 1500s was burning sodomites at the stake and they were capable of reconsidering their prejudices for the sake of love? That maybe, just maybe, people were capable of changing?  
>    
>  Anne Boleyn overturned multiple societal prejudices and norms in order to extend a hand of kindness towards Mary Tudor… and years later, Mary Tudor was able to set aside some of her own deeply held prejudices and beliefs, for the sake of Anne Boleyn.  
>    
>  _That_ is infinitely more interesting to me than “Mary Tudor was a tragedy and it is disrespectful to suggest otherwise”.

> **lenityliftsmeup:  
>    
>  **YET ANOTHER PERSON JUMPING IN I’M SORRY… but I was reading this thread and I just had to say this, as someone else who had parents who really… did not view kindness as a necessity, and also grew up shamed for being drawn to kind, diplomatic female characters, e.g. the “weak” and “useless” ones, and also has contended with intense self-hatred of my bisexuality. There’s a quote from Rebecca Solnit, about the importance of kindness in fairy tales:  
>    
>  “In [fairy tales], power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis…”  
>    
>  I just… when I see these things about how Anne’s early kindness may have been what allowed her to have the family she wanted, with two husbands and children by both of them and a stepdaughter who supported all of them. Not her political savvy, or her military prowess, or her religious convictions, but her simple and genuine kindness and decency (see my url as well). It’s so validating to those of us who grew up being shamed for having a big heart, to know that women can help other women, that even history books can be fairy tales in their own right, and that sometimes, kindness pays off and reverberates through the generations.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to spend quite a bit of time fiddling with the formatting to get it to resemble a Tumblr post... at last I succeeded.
> 
> Thanks for offering such a wonderful verse to play in! This really gave me a chance to explore a lot of my feelings about what could have been with regards to Anne and Mary's relationship, and also write a verse where female solidarity and setting aside prejudices and just plain simple kindness WINS. Hopefully you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this, and hopefully I make your Yuletide with my multimedia OT3 fic!


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